Abstract
Reviewed by: Rene Novak, University of Waikato, New Zealand
Breakthroughs in technological advancements have enabled the rise and distribution of virtual reality (VR) technology in the last three years, rendering it available for public consumers due to its relative affordability. The rapid expansion of VR devices worldwide raises metaphysical and philosophical questions that may have not been relevant in the past. Nevertheless, Michael Heim theorised VR in his book: ‘The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality’, a quarter of a century ago when this technology was mainly available exclusively to the military. Other VR content of that time was mostly related to science and even more often so to science fiction.
Back then Michael Heim outlined several predictions about the technological future of his world, some concerning VR but many more about the broader changes in the information age. For me – someone who is interested in technology developments – it was highly remarkable to note that many of his predictions have in part or in their entirety been realised today or are in the process of becoming a ‘reality’. For a book with the title: ‘Metaphysics of Virtual Reality’, one would expect most of the book to discuss what the title suggests; yet, he discussed a number of other technological issues before he addressed VR. This endorsed the feeling of being misled as only the last third of the book in as little as 40 pages addressed the content of the title. However, I must stress that I equally enjoyed the former two thirds of the book as I did the latter.
Throughout the book, Heim draws his thinking in correspondence with a range of significant personalities summoned from a multitude of paradigms of human existence such as philosophy (from Aristotle to Heidegger), art (from opera to science fiction writers), religion (Christianity to Buddhism and Taoism), science (from Cognition to Technology) and anthropology (from omnipotence to erotic ontology). Having these many voices included in the 160 pages of the book accounts for a very diverse reading experience but can also leave you with a slight sense of confusion as to which tradition Heim actually follows.
He speaks about phenomenology but leaves a question mark next to it when referring to VR and often denotes to Heidegger which leads me to believe that at the heart of it he is a Heideggerian. Also contributing to this assertion is the fact that the title of the chapter that starts to disseminate VR is ‘The essence of VR’. The basis of Heidegger’s philosophy lies in the phenomenological conception of the hidden essence of ‘things’ to be unveiled by the human conscience. Heim categorised his views on technology as neutral and expressed that this is the same view Heidegger upholds. It is in this space that an issue arises that is twofold. Referring to Heim’s views on technology as neutral, based on this book would be as saying that Dante Alighieri’s heaven and hell are neutral places to spend your eternity at. I would rather categorise his view on technology as severely bipolar. He successfully takes the reader on a journey from a possible technological nirvana to a dark cybernetic place where humans may survive but their humanity would surely be doomed. Referring to Heidegger’s views on technology as neutral can also be contested, as while Heidegger talks about a hope for us to be some day able to open our human existence to the essence of technology (Heidegger, 1996) in his essay ‘The question concerning technology’, he sturdily discloses thinking about the essence of technology that is far from neutral, but rather quite critical.
As mentioned before, Heim considers several distinct issues concerning technology, more specifically concerning the information age. His first chapter discusses the disease he refers to as ‘Infomania’. The reader is taken on a historical journey of knowledge representations from spoken words, cave drawings, written words and digital information. He gleefully examines the heavens of computerised information, but quickly crashes us down to the ocean floor to suffocate under a sea of disjointed and segmented information that is now unable to be compiled into meaningful knowledge. He further examines this issue from the view of linguistic logic and determines that all language based on computer systems is born from Boolean logic that undermines human intuition and the spiritual and esoteric way of being. Hypertext is discussed in the next chapter where its advantages for fast links and searches are portrayed only to be unmasked as a dark digital essence exposed as an illusion of knowledge that ‘unsettles the logical tracking of the mind’ (Heim, 1993) within a closed philosophical system. Here, he also speaks about the importance of learning from real-life experience in an embodied way which constitutes the embodiment theory first mentioned by Husserl who was Heidegger’s mentor and the father of phenomenology (Beck, 2015; Husserl, 1999). The next chapter grapples with the issue of how the computer is affecting thought processing of humans with tools such as spelling and grammar checks. Next the relationship between human and computer is disclosed where Heim sets them as opponents from the standpoint of Heidegger’s critique of technology. Chapter six signifies a shift of the book towards VR by discussing the human connection to cyberspace through interface. Here, he also introduces the term augmented reality, that is in the forefront of a lot of technological developments of the present. Reality, truth and phenomenology of cyberspace are being examined in the next part from an unconventional romantic and erotic ontology. The essence of VR is being highlighted in chapter eight through his seven divergent concepts of VR, followed by the chapter that attempts to bind a philosophical tradition to VR and discuss its virtues. The book concludes with a chapter entailing some final thoughts and a chapter with useful vocabulary.
Michael Heim’s book, ‘The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality’, punctuates several issues humanity faces in relation to technology in the information age that are particularly relevant in our present but more importantly he poses intriguing questions concerning our existence in reality and indeed in virtuality.